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IFRS Trustees complete their review of the IFRS Interpretations Committee

May 02, 2012

The Trustees of the IFRS Foundation have published the conclusions from their review of the IFRS Interpretations Committee.

The Trustees began the review in October 2010 by publishing a questionnaire designed to help the Trustees assess the effectiveness of the Interpretations Committee. The review was also intended to help alleviate concerns that the Interpretations Committee rejected too many requests for assistance and did not communicate clearly enough why certain issues were either rejected or taken onto the agenda. In that connection the agenda criteria of the Interpretations Committee were also reviewed.

The following conclusions from the review were published today:

The Interpretations Committee should be provided with a greater set of 'tools' for responding to issues brought to their attention including also the provision of non-mandatory guidance.

The agenda criteria of the Interpretations Committee should be revised and consistently applied to all requests. Proposed criteria are 'Prevalence and significance', 'Diversity in practice', 'Feasibility and efficiency', and 'Timeliness'.

The rejection notices should be improved by offering helpful guidance in cases where the Interpretations Committee has reached a view, by being capable of being read without reference to other documents and by being exposed for comment for 60 days.

The Interpretations Committee should make greater use of outreach and communicate better with the stakeholders when assessing whether to add an issue to their agenda.

The Trustees hope that the recommendations will enable the Interpretations Committee to deal with a wider range of requests and will result in fewer instances of items being rejected from the agenda in future.